Fits, Starts and Immaculate Enough Endings

Through seven innings Friday night, the Mets-Marlins contest could have gone either way. It’s not unusual that the identities of a given game’s winner and loser are yet to be determined with two regulation innings to go, but this brand of uncertainty gnawed a bit deeper. Lose this game to the Marlins, and it’s a kick in the gills. Win this game from the Marlins, and we are swimming speedily toward our goals.

We won. The water is fine.

Crappy losses to the Marlins in Miami are as much a part of trips to the Sunshine State as tolls on the Florida Turnpike. Sooner or later, legend and precedent have it, you’re gonna pay. In our last visit to Whatever It’s Called Park, we couldn’t escape until a walkoff home run was given up. It’s the cost of doing business where visible sacks of Soilmaster and episodes of last-pitch heartbreak each amount to coin of the realm. We’d been charged once already in 2022. It leaves you thinking gates will be down and hands will be out every time you show up.

A couple of things, though. One, this is 2022. It may not be easy to admit against all mental defense mechanisms you’ve erected for your perceived well-being that 2022 is a season different from the stacks that preceded it in a positive sense. It is. Check the record. Check the standings. Check the highlights. Woe is Mets is some other year’s suitable refrain. Two, the Marlins aren’t as singular in their terror-striking ability as we insist on believing. Early in Friday night’s telecast, and not for the first time in recent weeks, Keith Hernandez said the Marlins always give the Mets fits. Define “fits,” Keith. The Marlins take the field competing to win and sometimes do is about all I can come up with. The Brewers do that. The Dodgers do that. This applies to everybody on the schedule from what I can deduce. When the Marlins do pull one out, it does tend to annoy, probably because it’s usually somebody we never heard of doing something we didn’t expect, possibly because we inherently believe that unlike the Brewers or Dodgers or every other National League opponent, they are unworthy of ever winning a baseball game, let alone a baseball game against the Mets. How dare a franchise whose ownership and operations are in a perpetual state of shambles somehow assemble nine to ten players capable of occasionally prevailing?

The Marlins are in their thirtieth season. If you’re not used to them by now, I don’t know what to tell you. If you think they have some specific black-magical hold over the Mets, I do know I can tell you the Mets are 39-31 since the onset of summer 2014 (a.k.a. the dawn of deGrom) when playing in Miami and 88-61 overall versus the Fish in that span. The fits are aberrations. The wins are the norm. Tell your “but they always find a way to lose to the Marlins” old wives’ tales to shut up.

Admittedly, I didn’t comfort myself with such sharp statistical confirmation after seven innings, for I’m as susceptible to Dark Ages thinking as any Mets fan when the Marlins are biting. I certainly didn’t tell myself that it was likely everything was going to turn out swell after one inning, the bottom of which was soiled by Marlin runs — three, to be precise. Met starters rarely give up three runs at all. To have them piled on in introductory fashion, with the none of the hits leading to them particularly resounding, was unnerving. Goodness knows Chris Bassitt appeared unnerved in the dugout following that first inning, apparently barking about infield shifts that did not work to his advantage.

Chris never quite looked himself over six innings — if this were an Afterschool Special, we’d discover some shady kid slipped a suspicious substance into his sack lunch — or perhaps the essence of Chris Bassitt slips out now and then. Sometimes it’s to betray impatience with his catcher. Sometimes it’s a case of starting-pitcheritis wherein if everything around him isn’t perfect, then nothing is remotely adequate. Each artist is permitted his idiosyncrasies, especially when he’s holding the ball in the center of the action. Chris admitted afterward that pitching with too much rest following the All-Star break and assorted other off days contributed to his feeling “too good,” something noted pitching coach Fernando, as portrayed by Billy Crystal, warned against when he advised, “It’s better to look good than to feel good.”

Bassitt didn’t look too good in the early going, and it wasn’t mahvelous. Fortunately, he is surrounded by Mets capable of picking their starting pitcher up. Usually it’s the starters who do the heavy lifting, but talented rosters can be versatile. The top of the second saw the Mets even matters against a quality starter — Sandy Alcantara — for whom three runs usually provides a brick wall. Alcantara could be the NL’s Cy Young, but a certain team is prone to giving him fits in his own backyard. The Mets nicked him for four runs in seven innings at Miami in June, and they didn’t wait long to overcome his budding résumé Friday. With one out in the second, Mark Canha belted a big double; with two out, Tomás Nido walked; Brandon Nimmo belted a bigger double (Canha scored; Nido should have but spectated a little between first and second); and Starling Marte belted the biggest of triples (everybody on base scored). In this Friday night fight, the belt was very much up for grabs.

Alcantara wasn’t impenetrable and Bassitt wasn’t in a hole. Well, Chris did stumble one more time, in the bottom of the second, on a walk and a single, but a run-scoring double play more or less rescued him. The Marlins were ahead again, 4-3, but they would be halted in their tracks immediately thereafter. Bassitt wasn’t smooth (four walks), but he was doggedly efficient, grinding six and putting up only zeroes through his final four.

Marte maintained his initial pace, and that was for the best. The triple from the second, which followed a single in the first, was complemented by a solo homer in the fourth. All of it was off Alcantara. All of it was on the heels of game-winner from Wednesday night. The entirety of 2022 has shown Marte’s forte for production. As right fielders imported by Mets teams aspiring to seriously improve, Starling Marte this year is the veritable reincarnation of Rusty Staub fifty years ago.

If you’ve looked at Marte this season and then try to reckon it with your image of Staub the last time he played, don’t stop at the 1985 pinch-hitter deluxe version. Rewind in your mind to 1972 if you can, or find yourself some footage. Le Grand Orange was a full-fledged, all-around ballplayer in his prime, and we got to enjoy two fruitful months of vintage Rusty, right up until Atlanta reliever George Stone — yeah, that George Stone — hit him in the hand on June 3. The first quarter of Staub’s season had his OPS over .900 and the Mets lapping the East. Then Rusty gets hit, he tries to play through the pain; he slumps; he sits; he comes back too soon; and 1972 goes to hell.

Rusty would eventually return in good shape and do great Rusty things over the remainder of his first Met tenure, but the Staub we got in 1972 was a template for what we’re getting from Starling in 2022. Impact. Dynamism. Intelligence. Rusty lacked speed, but he knew how to run the bases. Starling is blessed with every tool and uses them wisely and regularly. He’s also gotten a break in that his two bouts with leg problems came and went without obvious long-term implications. He’s out there every night, he’s slashing .305/.353/.482, and he’s a primary reason 2022 is heading in the opposite direction of where 1972 went.

Help is all around him. Though he didn’t figure into the scoring, Daniel Vogelbach continued to show he might have been worth the price of Colin Holderman (currently a Triple-A reliever in the Pirate system), reaching base once via walk and twice via doubles. On one of his two-base hits, he swung so hard that it loosened the chain around his neck. Imagine how much faster he’d be if not weighed down by jewelry.

Attaining jewelry is the main goal of this organization, whether through drawing new cards — welcome, Tyler Naquin (trade from the Reds); see ya, Travis Jankowski (DFA’d to clear space) — or by relying on the cards you’ve been nursing the whole time. Until merry prankster Jacob deGrom comes back Tuesday, Brandon Nimmo can claim Met seniority on the active roster. Old Man Brandon goes back to June 26, 2016. It only felt as if he hadn’t gotten a hit since then entering Friday night. The Nimmo who was on-basing so effectively that the last time he was in Miami wags were retrofitting classic pop lyrics to meet his moment had been in an offensive funk. Had been. We noticed a double in the first. We were overwhelmed by a homer in the eighth. Brandon, you’re still a fine Met.

As indicated, the score had been 4-4 as of the fourth and it stayed 4-4 until the eighth. Also as indicated, there was a Leon Russell “Tight Rope” sense to the evening. One side’s hate and one is hope. It’s always glorious to win, but it would really rule to reel this Marlin battle safely aboard the boat. It always sucks to lose, but it would really suck to lose this game, considering their three-run first, their nosing ahead anew in the second and the settling down Bassitt did to hold them at bay. We’d overcome so much tsuris yet we were never more than tied. We’d gotten, too, an inning of professional relief from Adam Ottavino in the bottom of the seventh, which led a viewer to wonder who’d pitch the bottom of the eighth, though first the viewer wondered what the picture would be by then.

There’d be garlands of glory and a paucity of gloom. Eduardo Escobar, pinch-hitting for Luis Guillorme, beat out an infield single (note to Don Mattingly: quit challenging calls). Nido bunted Escobar to second, which is something Buck Showalter seems to enjoy asking Tomás to do lately. And then came Nimmo. He came prepared for whatever Steven Okert would offer him. He’d make short work and a long flight out of it.

The Mets were up, 6-4, on Brandon’s bolt from the blue. We were definitely on the sunny side of the tight rope. Could eighth-inning specialist du nuit Trevor Williams keep us leaning toward life rather than the funeral pyre? Drew Smith was on the IL. Seth Lugo gave more than inning of himself in the last Subway Series thriller. Ottavino gave his all in the seventh. Holderman’s in Indianapolis. Williams? Why not?

Eleven pitches. Three outs. Good call.

All that was left to determine was how clean Edwin Diaz’s 23rd save would be in the ninth. I mean, yeah, there always the possibility of a bloop and a blast, or balls squirting past infielders, or some combination of error, balk and wild pitch adding up to disaster. Any of it would neatly echo the teal-tinged black Marlin magic that lingers in our heads. But, nah, not this time. Not with this closer.

Ten pitches. All strikes. Three outs. All strikeouts. Not immaculate. Close enough.

Diaz had his save. The Mets had their desired result. The game was in the win column, where it belonged. As fits go, it was perfect.